Lessons from a Recovering Doormat

Holding on to Confidence

I’m delighted to have Keith Johnsonas my guest today. Known as America’s #1 Confidence Coach, he’s trained over 127,000 leaders to maximize their leadership potential and effectiveness. Keith is is a best-selling author of three books, including his latest, The Confidence Solution—Reinvent Your Life, Explode Your Business, Skyrocket Your Income. He has shared his experiences on several major television and radio stations offering his expertise to help others become more confident and more successful. ??Keith is the founder and CEO of Keith Johnson International, and presents his proven success principles at organizations, entrepreneur groups, churches, and events each year. Today he talks about not losing your confidence in this economic climate. Here’s what he has to say.

Maintaining Confidence in Unpredictable TimesBy Keith Johnson

In the present season of economic challenges, the confidence of many people is plummeting. Successful professionals and daily workers alike have experienced cuts, layoffs, and terminations. Talk about a blow to self-confidence! Losing your equity and home in addition to losing your job, retirement, and health insurance is certain to cause emotional and mental turmoil.

Regaining Our Confidence
In a fast-changing, insecure, unpredictable world, your confidence will not stay high automatically. If you are not careful, your confidence can change as quickly as your feelings change. You can feel like a champion one moment and then feel like a chump the next just by receiving a negative text message from a colleague or family member.

Confidence Coaching Solution: Confidence is a by-product of predictability.
When people first hear me say that “confidence is a by-product of predictability,” I get many blank stares. You may have some questions too, so let me explain this principle. I am a public speaker. I was diagnosed with a cyst in my jaw and had to have surgery. Less than two weeks after the surgery, I stood up to speak and experienced unpredictability. Prior to the surgery, I had great confidence in my ability to speak. But after the surgery, I experienced feelings of uncertainty. Would I be able to talk for a full hour? Could I handle the pain that lingered from the surgery? Everything was unpredictable as I stood up to speak. My confidence in speaking went from 90 percent certainty to 90 percent uncertainty. And this unpredictability caused my confidence to be challenged.

As a result of the current economic unpredictability, your confidence may have wobbled and drooped, perhaps for the very first time in your adult life. The thing to remember is that this disillusionment is temporary. It feels at times as though it is permanent and will never again be remedied. But given a few months or years, you will find traction again.

Confidence Coaching Solution: Unpredictability creates “Loss of Control” producing the “Feeling of Stress.” Predictability creates the feeling of “Being in Control” producing the “Feeling of Confidence.”

You feel confident about yourself to the degree to which you feel that you are in control of your own life. The opposite is also true: You feel insecure about yourself to the degree that you feel that you are not in control of your own life. To restore your confidence, you must jump-start. For me, I had to push myself to speak soon after my surgery and experience success—instead of stress—in order to restore the feeling of being in control. Are some things out of control in your life right now?

Do You Need a Jump Start?

I have noticed that every person, from CEOs to entry level workers, have times when it seems like everything goes cold and their batteries go dead. Here is a quick tip to help you “jump-start” your confidence when your battery runs low:

Confidence Coaching Tip – Ask yourself the right questions.
When we feel uncertain due to unpredictability in our lives, we internally may start asking ourselves the wrong questions, leading us down the slippery slope to losing our confidence. Confident people know the right questions to ask at the right times that will produce the solutions they need to reinvent themselves.

Profound questions produce profound answers. When feeling uncertain and in the midst of unpredictable situations, ask yourself, “What predictabilities have been removed from my life?” Then, “What immediate action can I take to make my life more predictable?”

Confident people know how to simplify change and jump-start progress. They break up the steps to reinventing themselves into small, manageable steps. A couple of my favorite questions that I ask myself during times of feeling insecure:

• What three things can I do in the next ninety days that will make a 50 percent difference in the remainder of this year?
• What one major problem do I need to solve that will make my life more predictable?

To jump-start your confidence, now is the time to start looking for solutions instead of focusing on problems. You must believe there is an answer to your current problems. If you will confidently believe that there is a solution to the problems you are facing, your mind will find it. If you don’t believe there is a solution, your mind will not create one.

When you start writing down some new ninety-day goals and action steps, you immediately become a different person. Your confidence toward yourself, your current challenges, and your future progresses in a very positive way. You will start feeling more confident, optimistic, and more in control of your life.
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HELLO DAYLLE !
I agree with what you’ve definitely layoffs at work or salary cuts can definitely hurt my self-confidence of the person ,Currently suffering from a recession this problem is particularly evident decline of self-confidence so it is important not to give up looking for work and care for each case,
Thanks for the wonderful article.

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About Lessons from a Recovering Doormat

Welcome to my self-empowerment blog. I used to be a wimp and never got taken seriously. When I became one of the first women to start a record label, I learned to navigate the male dominated music industry and earned respect, without raising my voice or getting overtly tough. I transferred those skills into all areas of life and now get what I want from most people. I'll share those lessons here by talking about my observations of situations and habits that hold both men and women back from being as empowered as possible. I'll also give tips for more effective communication, handling yourself with more confidence, and in general, how to come across as more serious--whether it's at work, dealing with an annoying phone company, your mother, a romantic partner and anyone else you want to feel more in control with. Everybody can use more tools for taking control of their lives, like in my latest book, Nice Girls Can Finish First.